Event address

This program is complimentary for members of the Council's Board of Directors; Founders' Circle, Chairman’s Circle, Ambassador’s Circle, Directors’ Circle, President’s Club members; and Corporate Principals and Senior Leaders of Corporate member companies.

Join the Council today at the $1,000 President’s Club level or above and receive complimentary admission to the program, dinner, and a copy of Niall Ferguson’s latest book The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power from the Freemasons to Facebook. For inquiries, please contact Karrie Miner, assistant director of major gifts, at +1 312-821-7541.

Hierarchical structures such as states dominate our understanding of history. But even as rulers asserted their power from the towers of palaces, real power often resided in the town squares below, within constantly shifting networks of people. The age of the world wide web has illuminated the power of networks but, Niall Ferguson argues, this is an age-old phenomenon. The tension between rigid hierarchies and fluid, informal webs of interconnection has been a defining, if misunderstood, driver of change and disruption throughout modern history. Are there historical analogies to the rise of today’s online social networks? What does history teach about the ability of networks to overcome established hierarchies?

Copies of Niall Ferguson's new book The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power from the Freemasons to Facebook will be available for sale and signing after the program.

Speaker Bio

Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of fifteen books, including Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. Ferguson is also an award-making filmmaker having won an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. In addition to writing a weekly column for London’s Sunday Times and the Boston Globe, Ferguson is also the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, an advisory firm, and serves on the board of Affiliated Managers Group.

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